“Some years since, a young man who had been attacked by small-pox was declared by the medical man to be dead, and was laid out for burial. The nurse, however, on paying a visit to the supposed corpse, thinking there was something uncorpse-like about its appearance, put a wine-glass over the mouth, and returning in a quarter of an hour, found it dimmed with breath. He was resuscitated, and, so far as I am aware, is still living. He would now be about forty-five. He is a farmer. “A mother and her baby were ill of small-pox, and seemed likely to die. The grandmother, however, made the nurse promise that if death appeared to ensue, and even if the medical man pronounced either or both to be dead, she would put additional blankets on the one or both, and leave them so till her (the grandmother’s) return, which would not be till the next day. They both appeared to die, and were declared dead by the doctor; but the nurse did as she had promised, and the next day when the grandmother returned, they were both alive, and were both living not very long since. “Some twenty years ago, I was told that about forty years previously a young man, in a parish where I was acquainted, was put in a coffin as a person dead of small-pox; but when the bell was tolling for his funeral, and he was about to be ‘screwed down,’ he got up and vacated the coffin, and lived several years afterwards. “In a town where I was brought up, a woman was nearly buried alive through having gone into a trance on being frightened by a young lady who had put on a white sheet and pretended to be a ‘ghost.’ For years she was liable to long spells of insensibility, from which nothing could rouse her. “The haste with which small-pox corpses are disposed of nowadays is to be deprecated. They are usually buried within twelve hours of their supposed death, and the cases I first mentioned show with what very probable results. The only sure proof of death is decomposition, and a law ought to be passed forbidding burial until signs of it have appeared. Not very long since I was in a church-yard where a drain was being made round the church, and was not a little struck by the horrified look of a labourer who came to the vicar and stated that they had come on a skull face downward, which, he said, put it beyond doubt that the person it had belonged to had turned in his coffin after burial.--I am, Sir, yours faithfully, “B. A. “June 18, 1884.” The _Undertakers’ Journal_, May 22, 1895, has the following:-- [REV. HARRY JONES’ CASES.]